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Monthly Archives: September 2008

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Three quarters done. See that ball there? That’s all I have left to knit. Foot included for scale.

It’s been a busy week! After the knitting on Tuesday, I went to a “Late” at the Science Museum with Ben. That’s where a bunch of trendy 20-somethings quaff wine and play with all the kids’ stuff. Who knew there were so many geeks in disguise? Seriously though it was a fun evening, I forgot my camera but hopefully Ben got some good photos.

Last night was shoe shopping with Raj. I find shoe shopping rather demoralising as I have slightly difficult feet – can’t wear flats, can’t wear anything too high, extremely narrow feet means I usually need an ankle strap on everything… it’s lucky I like Mary Janes really. My old work shoes have stretched out too much to wear any more. So anyway, I settled on a black pair with two inch heels, ankle strap, very similar to a character dance shoe really. Love that dance shoe vibe. Except it’s just dawned on me that I simply could have bought a pair of character shoes and they would be nearly twice as comfortable for nearly half the price. Gah.

Busy weekend ahead – dancing tomorrow night, Fashion Weekend on Sunday, with various comings and goings at the flat as well. Hopefully I’ll be able to fit in some other things as well, like getting a photo of my finished vest!

Every year Innocent runs a campaign where they collect up a whole lot of tiny knitted hats, put them on smoothie bottles, sell the smoothies, and donate 50p from each sale to Age Concern to keep old people warm. It’s that time of year again, so a group of us gathered in the Royal Festival Hall tonight and by the end of the evening, we had this:

(two of them are mine!)

Dave modelling his contribution.

I also bumped into another group of knitters there, went over to say hi and they were a lovely bunch of girls. We’re taking over the world! One stitch at a time…

Lightbulbs! About eight months ago I replaced the incandescent lightbulb in our hallway with another incandescent bulb I found in the hall cupboard. The other day it burnt out. Digging around in the hall cupboard again I actually found an energy-saving bulb to replace it with (and got Jason to do it actually, as he can actually reach the thing!)

Anyway, my point is of course, when your incandescent bulbs blow out, replace them with energy-saving bulbs! Use up the ones you still have though as there’s no point creating extra landfill before you need to. Also, should your energy-saving bulbs ever blow out, make sure you dispose of them safely.

I watched an interesting program the other night on the BBC, called Earth: Climate Wars, which examined both sides of the climate change debate. It went into all of the arguments by sceptics that climate change is either a) not happening at all or b) not caused by human activity. I was really surprised by the strength of my reaction to this – I really, really wanted the sceptics to be right. I wanted to be convinced by the arguments, so I would stop having to worry about flying, or buying too much stuff, or buying energy saving light bulbs. Unfortunately, attractive as the arguments were, they were soundly demolished. The next episode focuses on what we can actually do about it, and I will be watching with interest.

Well, on the last glorious day of summer I spent the entire day inside, in the British Museum. The Hadrian exhibition was great, and afterwards I went to a lecture by Professor Robin Breeze, followed by the BBC documentary on Hadrian, presented by my future husband, Dan Snow. Sadly I think the happy day of our marriage is still some way off, perhaps owing to the fact that he doesn’t even know my name yet… well, we’re just taking things slow, that’s all!

Now it’s officially Autumn, and after the past fortnight’s bout of start-itis I’m in a finishing frenzy. Yesterday it was the Baby Surprise Jacket, today I finished the Scoop Neck Vest (photos soon! I’ll probably wear it tomorrow), and tomorrow I hope to finish several projects! But more on that later.

While I was knitting I read through some of the book the pattern is contained in, The Opinionated Knitter. I bought the book for £25 from I Knit. I thought this was an awful lot of money, but over on Amazon it’s £32. Anyway, reading through the book has made me feel a lot better about it – now I see what all the Elizabeth Zimmerman fuss is about! It’s the kind of book that leaves you feeling all warm and fuzzy, and there’s a lot in there to learn too! Highly recommended.

Over the past two weeks, I have started three knitted objects and finished none:

1. Blue Sky Alpaca Scoop Neck Vest, attempt #2:

As you can see, it just needs the neck and armhole edging. I’ll probably finish this on the next cold day we have – at the moment the weather has rallied somewhat, perhaps the hoped-for Indian Summer?

2. Rug

This is how much rug you can knit while you are trying to get over a stolen wallet. Yes, arms do get sore after a while.

3. Blob

Actually my first Baby Surprise Jacket, currently at the “interesting” stage. This is high-priority knitting as the recipient was born two and a half weeks ago and I want it to still fit him! I met him (and cuddled him!) today and he’s gorgeous.